21 into 1
"21 goes into 1" is a hint given to us by stormseeker. It was first posted on the bmrf.us wiki page on the 26th of August, 2014, accompanied by another hint "This unlocks at the start of the end". It was given to us by the same wiki contributor who gave us the hint about the philosopher's stone being a red herring. Later, on the 2nd of January, 2015, IRC chat users Krydar, Apdap, and TornadoAP, as well as forum user Manhacks discovered the hint inside the http://www.thestormseeker.com/js/ javascripts index of Stormseeker's Website attached to any of the scripts in that index. The last-modified timestamp of one of these javascript files (as stated in the HTTP headers from the server) was "Mon, 25 Nov 2013 02:20:01 GMT". The message along with the hint is as follows: /*! *Oh hai there, someones bein a nosy bounder aren't they... *Looking for ARG related stuffs? *I have a hint for you *21 goes into 1 *Don't trust anyone, it's not safe. */ A new clue in Xen A new "21 into 1" hint was found on a whiteboard in Dr. Horn's Xen Lair. As seen in the image to the right, it is in the form of a hand-drawn circle with "21 into ONE" written inside it. At the top, outside the circle, "WHAT IS THIS THING" and "WHY DOES IT CALL" is written. At the center, there is a spiral shape or pattern which spirals inwards in a clockwise direction. 16 dots form a circle around the spiral. Outside the circle of dots, five triangular shapes have been placed in a symmetric but non-regular pentagonal pattern, where four of the sides appear to be of equal length and the side at the bottom is roughly half the length of the other sides. The pentagon shape has been placed so that it is pointing upwards. Next to each of the triangular shapes are mysterious symbols, which have now been identified as being letters from the Asuran alphabet (see below). Between the triangular shapes there are arrows pointing in a circular clockwise direction around the spiral. Inside the circle, we also find "5 AXIS COORDS. → 2 MORE". Below the figure is a diagram of a coordinate system, which has been found to be a reference to Stargate. This is also supported by the fact that there is a Stargate in the near vicinity of the whiteboard. Also below, we find "ICOSIKAIHENAGON ??", "OR IS IT A HEXADECAGON ??". An icosikaihenagon is a 21-sided polygon, a hexadecagon is 16-sided. To the top right, the word "SNAX??" is written with a line drawn from it into the "21 into 1" circle. Solved puzzles Symbols After player Flavrans on Aug 14, 2019 (UTC), discovered that the mysterious gate in Dr. Horn's Xen Lair looked remarkably similar to an Asura gate in Guildwars 2, it was quickly discovered that the symbols were letters in the Asuran alphabet. Starting with the top symbol, and reading the symbols in a clockwise direction as indicated by the arrows, the symbols spell out the word or name "MYONS". Player Gunsrequiem then noted that he had found a forum post titled "Meet the Myons", on a forum for the guild, of which Stormseeker is a member. In this forum post, Stormseeker presented the Myons—a whole family of characters which Stormseeker (the puppetmaster) has created in the Guildwars 2 universe, one of which is his main playing character. It was also noted that Stormseeker has previously used his main Myon character as an avatar on the Black Mesa Community Forums. Legible Version with Notes: ;5 AXIS COORDS 2 MORE :Reference to 7 keys being necessary to operate a Stargate. ;ICOSIKAIHENAGON OF ?? OR IS IT A HEXADECAGON ?? :May be referencing Chon, Icosikaihenagon=21 sided polygon :Hexadecagon=16-sided polygon. ;SAD FACE BESIDE STATEMENT 'PROBABLY CASUALTY TOO' :Dr. Foreman may be dead and Dr. Horn is sad about it. ;PROBABLY IN ON IT :Referencing Welsh. Stone and Welsh are working together against Horn. ;OBSESSED WITH TIME TEAM :Inside joke. ;WHERE DID HE GO :Horn doesn't know where Junek is. ;WATCH HIM :Suspicious of Sisk. ;BORROWING IS NOT LEGIT, STEALS :Horn accused Stone of stealing his pizzas. ;KNOWS TOO MUCH :Doesn't like the fact that Sezen knows things. ;PBR - PARALLAX CUBES -GEEF- :Inside joke about Chetan's programming skills. ;WHY ARE THERE BOATS EVERYWHERE? :Inside joke about hiding out of place things like boats in maps. ;SPHERE OF CHON - FALSE GOD :Reference to Chon Kemp (TextFAMGUY1) and a practical joke played on Chon Kemp by another developer, Shawn Olson. ;NIMROD - RAPHEL MAI AMECCHE ZABI ALMI :A verse from Dante's Inferno. The verse is shouted out by Nimrod, one of the giants who guard the Ninth Circle of Hell. The line, whose literal meaning is uncertain (it is usually left untranslated), is usually interpreted as a sign of the confusion of the languages caused by the fall of the Tower of Babel. ;WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE :Names of ARG forum participants. ;LOCUTUS :Latin word that means spoken, having spoken, or he who has spoken, also a reference to Star Trek TNG, where Locutus of Borg was the name given Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard after he was assimilated by the Borg. ;DIS :Roman god of the underworld. It is also the name of a place in Dante's The Divine Comedy, the City of Dis. ;DANTE :Author of Dante's Inferno (the first part of The Divine Comedy). ;YIU :Stormseeker stated on Discord, August 14, 2019, "Starrifyx is Dr Yiu plot thickens" Theories Spiral pattern After the link to the Guildwars 2 universe had been discovered, it was speculated that the spiral might be a reference to Morgan's Spiral, which is an area in Caledon forest in the Guildwars 2 universe. Stormseeker commented on this on Discord on November 14, 2019: morgans spiral is a good theory as to a potential destination, ironically it was the daily jumping puzzle for today, but I doubt its the answer. GW2 really isn't a part of the arg. 21 into 1 *21 goes into 1 is meant to be a hint to decipher the 752 Hex Code in some way. **It is somehow tied to the encryption. **Forum user thewizard99 showed how both 1 and 21 were numbers in The Fibonacci sequence. **21 and 1 are both Triangular numbers. **21 is 3*7, i.e. two multiplied prime numbers. This is quite often used in asymmetric crypto, like the Benaloh and Paillier ciphers. *21 into 1 is a date, specifically the 21st of January. Suggested by forum user TornadoAP **Debunked: Date has passed. *21 goes into 1 is related to the 21 amino acids that are the building blocks of all human proteins? *EP-0021 goes into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer. *The subject-verb agreement in "21 goes into 1" dictates that "21" be a singular object. *21 into 1 could be another way of saying 1/21 which equals 0.047619047619..., which is an infinite repeating decimal with a repetend of 047619. *Forum user Gunsrequiem suggested it could be a reference to a game of laser duel from the ''Star Trek TNG'' episode s04e03 "Brothers" (transcript). This episode is referenced on a monitor in the open floor plan office in the QE chapter. *21 into 1 could be referring to "clock math" where the hour hand is moved 20 hours back from 21:00 to 01:00. In other words, subtract 20 from a number. This could also mean doing modulo 20 arithmetic (taking the remainder of division by 20). *The numbers in "21 into 1" could be hex (base 16), where 21 in hex is 33 in decimal. *It has been noted that the in-game pizza has 21 pepperonis in the outermost ring of pepperonis. There are four rings of pepperonis with one in the center: 21, 16, 10, 5, 1 (53 in total.)